Archives for April 2015
In Defense of Millennials in the Workforce
Last week we published a blog post on our website and across our various social media patterns called âThree Tips for Hiring Millennials to Your Team.â We were rather taken aback at some of the responses â lots of people automatically dismissed millennials as being âlazy,â needing to be âcoddled,â being âunprofessionalâ and more.
Of course, this attitude toward the younger generation is nothing new. Baby boomers can probably think back to a time when they were just coming of age and were disrespected by their parentsâ generation as well. The classic song âSignsâ by Five Man Electrical Band instantly comes to mind as a great portrayal of this.
But the truth is, any company that overlooks millennials in the hiring process is dooming itself to failure.
Today, millennials are entering the workforce in huge numbers, which can understandably be a somewhat frightening thing to people who have
At Viral Solutions, we understand the trials and tribulations that many new owners of small businesses face in the early going.
The commitment of time and resources that is necessary at the outset can leave many business owners frustrated or exhausted. Weâve experienced this ourselves in our own business operations, so we know just how unpleasant it is and how it can come close to crushing the motivation you had that led you to start the business in the first place.
worked in their industry for decades. Whatâs more noteworthy is not the sheer number of millennials that are entering the workforce, but the characteristics that are common among this generation, such as:
⢠Highly advanced networkers. This is a generation that has grown up with the internet and with social media, and has its finger on the pulse of technology and networking trends. They are easily able to see through marketing speak on social media, which means they also understand how to use social media networks to market more naturally without turning off potential customers.
⢠Vision-centric. More than any generation that came before them, millennials care about doing work that they believe makes a difference, and they will be picky about the kinds of jobs that they take on. While one might say that it doesnât make sense to be picky about jobs in this economy, consider this: millennials know that theyâre likely never going to have the kind of retirement packages and benefits that previous generations did. So if theyâre going to have to work long into their senior years, theyâre going to make sure itâs in a job that has a clear mission and vision.
⢠A value of flexibility. While previous generations were attracted to jobs by more tangible perks and benefits, millennials highly value flexibility in the workplace. They want a career that allows them to lead the life they want to lead, including traveling, activities and more. They want to have some freedom to set their schedules, work remotely and more. Again, this comes down to millennials wanting to work to live, rather than the other way around.
Essentially, millennialsâ ideal form of work is one that gives them a platform to allow themselves to add meaning to the world, while still being able to live their own life.
It isnât âcoddlingâ to say that we should adjust our hiring processes and the way we do business with millennials. A great leader knows how all of his or her employees are motivated, and understands that processes need to change as new generations with new ideals come to the forefront.
Speaking of leadership, remember millenials, that one of you must step to the forefront and manage performance and profits that appease your stakeholders. As my dear friend Joe Wojtal put it, “Where there's room for accommodation, companies will be flexible. The question will be whether this group will grow into the business leaders that have to balance profits with personal interests. Someone has to keep the lights on!”
What it comes down to is this: adapt, or get left behind.
Copyright 2015 Viral Solutions LLC
by Thomas von Ahn | Chief Elephant Slayer
Watch out elephants! This slayer of business challenges comes with 30 years of record breaking sales, marketing, operations, training and leadership experience . He has worked face-to-face with 100âs of small business owners as well as large firms. His love of creating, communicating, developing and executing results for clients shines with each project, publication and training event. His entrepreneurial spirit, passion, industry experience, education, problem-solving prowess, charismatic personality and been-there-done that attitude leads his client focused approach.
Viral Solutions LLC is a Digital Marketer Certified Partner, Infusionsoft Certified Consultant and a Mobit Certified Partner. We help overwhelmed small business owners duplicate themselves – so business can be fun again.
Will Millennials Bring an End to the Traditional Nine-to-Five Structure?
Thereâs been quite a pattern in recent years of companies moving away from the traditional nine-to-five work day structure. While part of that has to do with the rise of the internet and the growing ability to work remotely, another significant part has to do with a new attitude being brought into the business world by Millennials.
More than any previous generation, Millennials are seeking jobs that allow for flexible hours and freedom in terms of where and when they work. Not only are they pursuing more freelance and independent positions, but they are also seeking jobs that allow them to work remotely on a regular basis, or at least give them the ability to set their own hours on occasion.
This is the first generation to grow up with the internet and enter the work world, and now weâre seeing its effects. The internet has opened a lot of doors for this generation, and theyâre taking their interests and passions and
The foundation of our success as a business is the relationships that we create with our clients. Everyone we work with says the same thing: we truly care about our clients and will do everything we can to help them find success in their operations. We have collected some testimonials on our website that should give you a better idea of what people are saying about Viral Solutions.
finding a way to act on them online, rather than in a cubicle in an office building.
Perhaps the most unique aspect of Millennials in the work world is their passion for finding work that they believe is meaningful, rather than just being willing to slide into any career. Even in an age where finding a job is significantly more difficult than it was in decades passed, Millennials are being picky with the kinds of jobs that they take and seem less willing to compromise with jobs that they do not enjoy or do not provide some sort of meaning to their lives.
Finally, Millennials understand the importance of personal branding and networking better than any generation that came before them. You see it in the way they interact with people on social networks â they are extremely connected, and have an innate ability to leverage those connections to find personal success.
So do these traits mean that Millennials will bring about the end of the traditional nine-to-five work day? Probably not entirely, but over the next few years weâre going to continue to see a trend of businesses emphasizing flexibility, freedom and meaningful work when targeting young employees, and that trend isnât going to end any time soon.
Copyright 2015 Viral Solutions LLC
by Thomas von Ahn | Chief Elephant Slayer
Watch out elephants! This slayer of business challenges comes with 30 years of record breaking sales, marketing, operations, training and leadership experience . He has worked face-to-face with 100âs of small business owners as well as large firms. His love of creating, communicating, developing and executing results for clients shines with each project, publication and training event. His entrepreneurial spirit, passion, industry experience, education, problem-solving prowess, charismatic personality and been-there-done that attitude leads his client focused approach.
Viral Solutions LLC is a Digital Marketer Certified Partner, Infusionsoft Certified Consultant and a Mobit Certified Partner. We help overwhelmed small business owners duplicate themselves – so business can be fun again.
STEM Training Alone Doesnât Make for a Successful Business Environment
Whenever there are discussions about the state of public education in America these days, the focus inevitably shifts toward the scores that American children get in math and science, and how there is a risk of them lagging behind other developed nations. We are constantly hearing about new ways that companies, schools and organizations expand STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) courses, and how some politicians have begun to discourage people from getting degrees in liberal arts or have even underfunded liberal arts majors.
A recent editorial column in The Washington Post examined the phenomenon of Americaâs âobsession with STEM education.â One of the key examples that the author of the column, Fareed Zakaria, mentions is that of Apple, a company known for a combination of technology and innovation.
“The most valuable skills will be the ones that are uniquely human, that computers cannot quite figure out â yet. And for those jobs, and that life, you could not do better than to follow your passion, engage with a breadth of material in both science and the humanities, and perhaps above all, study the human condition.” ~ Fareed Zakaria
Where would Apple be today were it not for its ability to constantly re-imagine how humans and technology interact, and what sorts of new innovations could help make our lives easier? Apple has become more than a technology company, especially over the past decade and a half. Itâs become a thought leader. Today, companies look to Apple for examples of how to be leaders in innovation in their market spaces, and a big part of that is the companyâs ability to effectively combine outstanding STEM training with critical thought.
The emphasis on STEM is a rather recent trend, too. For most of the history of the United States, weâve had an educational system that was extremely well-rounded. Technologists argue that the world today isnât changing as quickly as in past decades and that technology plays a bigger role in our lives than ever before.
But nobody argues the importance of technology in todayâs world. What is concerning is not that there is such a focus on STEM training in todayâs society, but that that focus comes at the expense of other important academic areas that teach people how to be creative, how to think critically and how to be leaders in thought and business.
Any successful entrepreneur will be able to tell you that their success came from a combination of technical excellence and innovation. STEM is absolutely, incredibly important in todayâs world, but that doesnât mean that other schools of thought and learning should be left by the wayside. Just having one or the other isnât good enough. But that seems to be lost on many people today.
Copyright 2015 Viral Solutions LLC
by Thomas von Ahn | Chief Elephant Slayer
Watch out elephants! This slayer of business challenges comes with 30 years of record breaking sales, marketing, operations, training and leadership experience . He has worked face-to-face with 100âs of small business owners as well as large firms. His love of creating, communicating, developing and executing results for clients shines with each project, publication and training event. His entrepreneurial spirit, passion, industry experience, education, problem-solving prowess, charismatic personality and been-there-done that attitude leads his client focused approach.
Viral Solutions LLC is a Digital Marketer Certified Partner, Infusionsoft Certified Consultant and a Mobit Certified Partner. We help overwhelmed small business owners duplicate themselves – so business can be fun again.
Ways Youâre Killing Your Employeesâ Motivation
Great employers are always looking for new ways to keep their employees motivated. But if youâre having motivation problems in your workplace, chances are that there are things that you need to stop doing to really improve the motivation levels of your team.
Here are some ways that you could possibly be killing your employee motivation:
Viral Solutions has significant experience in the areas of sales, sales management and small to medium business management consulting. Our experience is spread across a wide variety of industries. This breadth of experience gives us the ability to adapt our services to fit the specific needs of your business, rather than forcing you to adapt to the services that we provide.
⢠Keeping toxic employees. People with bad attitudes or people who act like jerks on the job really poison the well and bring everyone else down. If you canât change their attitude, keeping them around could wreak havoc on the rest of your team.
⢠Lack of vision. You should have a clear goal and vision in mind for your company, and you should be able to clearly communicate that vision to all of your employees. If they donât know what that vision is, then theyâre going to be less effective because they canât grasp the big picture.
⢠Wasting their time. Do you send out memos that donât really have any important information, or call meetings just for the sake of having meetings? Things like this only serve to frustrate your employees. Wasting their time on a regular basis is going to make them less motivated to actually get anything done.
⢠Poor communication. Without open channels of communication, most people will spend a pretty significant portion of their time trying to figure out exactly what it is they should be doing, rather than doing it. You need to give people clear instructions as to what their tasks are, and what expectations you have for them. Otherwise, theyâre going to lose motivation by having to spend so much time guessing exactly what it is you want out of them.
⢠Lack of appreciation. If you never tell your employees that theyâve done a good job or that you appreciate their work, theyâre not likely to enjoy themselves very much. Take the time to recognize hard work and great achievements.
Work with Viral Solutions to prevent yourself from making these and any other motivation-killing mistakes!
Copyright 2015 Viral Solutions LLC
by Thomas von Ahn | Chief Elephant Slayer
Watch out elephants! This slayer of business challenges comes with 30 years of record breaking sales, marketing, operations, training and leadership experience . He has worked face-to-face with 100âs of small business owners as well as large firms. His love of creating, communicating, developing and executing results for clients shines with each project, publication and training event. His entrepreneurial spirit, passion, industry experience, education, problem-solving prowess, charismatic personality and been-there-done that attitude leads his client focused approach.
Viral Solutions LLC is a Digital Marketer Certified Partner, Infusionsoft Certified Consultant and a Mobit Certified Partner. We help overwhelmed small business owners duplicate themselves – so business can be fun again.
Mistakes That Could Cost You Some Great Job Candidates
Every business is only as strong as the team it puts together. Therefore, you should be focused on doing everything you can to add high-quality employees to your company.
If you want to increase your chances of finding and snagging those outstanding individuals, however, you need to be able to avoid making some of these mistakes, which are far more common than you might expect:
⢠Poor first impressions. You hear a lot about how important it is for the potentially employee to make a strong first impression on the employer, but this works the other way around, too. 
To the majority of job candidates, the professionalism you exhibit will play a big role in determining whether they will accept a position at your company, or even apply at all. During the interview process, make sure that you treat everyone like a potential employee rather than just another body with a resume. Present your company in the best possible light.
⢠Low-balling. You can certainly negotiate terms of salary and benefits with potential employees, but there is a definite line that you should avoid crossing, lest you get into the territory of low-balling. As soon as you cross that line, youâve basically told the potential employee that the companyâs needs are greater than their own, and that you donât particularly value what they can bring to the table. The best candidates will walk away in these situations.
⢠Ridiculous expectations. Sometimes in their efforts to find the perfect employee, companies will set some unreasonable requirements that barely anyone is capable of meeting. Take a good look at the expectations that you have as a company. Are they acting as a way to filter out lower-quality prospects, or a red flag that turns back potentially excellent prospects?
⢠Condescension. This is related to the need to make a good first impression. Treat your candidates like people when they come in, not just another face in the crowd. Moreover, treat them like they are professionals themselves, not students.
Is your company guilty of any of these mistakes? If so, you may be turning away some big catches in terms of your employees. Work with Viral Solutions to resolve these issues.
by Christine Kelly
CEO and Queen Bee | Viral Solutions LLC
Copyright 2015 Viral Solutions LLC
Prior to joining Viral Solutions, Christine held executive leadership roles at some of the largest small business consulting firms in the USA. Her experience includes leading direct reports of over 130 remote sales agents who generated $38mm in annual revenue. She obtained her Marketing degree from British Columbia Institute of Technology. Bring her C-Suite experience to your small business. Although our company is virtual, and we can work with you wherever you are located, she is located in Denver, Colorado and owns a second home in Vancouver, BC Canada.
Viral Solutions LLC is a Digital Marketer Certified Partner, Infusionsoft Certified Consultant and a Mobit Certified Partner. We help overwhelmed small business owners duplicate themselves – so business can be fun again.